Though images of the Buddha have played a significant role in Buddhist
devotional practices, in Sri Lanka anyway, from the very beginning, the
primary focus of Buddhist cultic practice has been the reliquary monument
(stupa). This dome-shaped edifice, sometimes hundreds of feet in
diameter
and height, is believed to contain some portion of the Buddha's own
corporeal body, saved from his funeral pyre and passed down through
lineages of devoted kings into the present. These relics are kept in tiny
caskets (karanduwa), themselves shaped like stupas, which in turn
may be interred within the towering monuments; three nineteenth century
karanduwas are exhibited here. The most important of the Island's stupas
have been systematized variously as the eight or sixteen great places;
Ms. #47, itself devoted to the fine-points of Buddhist practice, contains
largely non-representational paintings of the sixteen great places on its
inner covers.

The book in some sense is a stupa; both contain bits of the Buddha's
"body," the former spiritual (dharmakaya) and the latter corporeal
(rupakaya). Little surprise, then, that the book itself has become,
like
a stupa, an object of cultic significance. The book itself is treated
with reverence. It is invoked and worshipped, employed in ceremonial and
carefully preserved and used. The presentation of books from donor to
recipient (often a monk at the time of ordination, or at the death of a
teacher, or on the occasion of some important holiday) was a cause for
festival and procession; kings honored special manuscripts in the same
way. Among some Buddhists in Sri Lanka, the book itself literally became
the Buddha-relic; fine manuscripts inscribed on leaves of gold or copper
were actually deposited within stupas.

The cultic significance of the physical object, though largely
unobservable in contemporary Sri Lankan book culture, survived well into
the twentieth century despite the displacement of the palm leaf
manuscript form. Fine binding in tooled leather was the rule for early
printed Sinhala and Pali codices, which were presented to monastic
libraries by wealthy patrons, complete with festival and procession. A
collection of late nineteenth and early twentieth century Buddhist
codices is included here by way of illustration.